Immigration and US ‘spying’ to dominate EU summit

An EU summit in Brussels on Thursday will likely focus on allegations of US spying and the issue of immigration, which was thrust into the spotlight earlier this month after a shipwreck off Italy left hundreds of asylum seekers dead.

European immigration and a row over US eavesdropping are set to dominate an EU leaders' summit beginning in Brussels on Thursday, after a deadly shipwreck off Italy shocked the continent.

The deaths of hundreds of migrants trying to reach Europe has triggered a barrage of calls for action to prevent the Mediterranean Sea from turning into what French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius labelled an "open-air cemetery".

The summit comes weeks after Italy's worst refugee disaster in which a boat carrying mainly Eritrean asylum-seekers caught fire, capsized and sank within sight of the coast of Lampedusa island on October 3, killing 364 migrants.

Meanwhile a growing row over secret US electronic surveillance is also expected to be at the forefront of the talks, after reports that the United States eavesdropped on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone calls.

Germany summons US ambassador over spying allegations

Germany’s foreign minister summoned the United States’ ambassador to Germany, John B. Emerson, on Thursday to discuss allegations that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone had been monitored, a government spokesman said on Thursday.

The move comes a day after Merkel called US President Barack Obama to demand an explanation, warning that if true, the act would amount to a “grave breach of trust”.

(FRANCE 24 with wires)

The allegation followed reports earlier in the week that Washington had monitored millions of phone calls inside France, and will add to pressure on Brussels for new EU-wide data privacy protections.

Officially, the two-day talks are themed around boosting employment and the digital economy, and Fabius said President Francois Hollande would raise the issue of data privacy at the summit

"It is not possible to develop (Europe's) digital sphere without protecting personal data," he said.

But Europe's battered southern economies – including Italy, Greece, Malta, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Spain – are determined to focus on the tide of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East which they say they are being left to cope with alone.

Frontex reportedly saved 16,000 lives in the Mediterranean in the last two years, but has seen its budget fall from 118 million euros ($162 million) in 2011 to 85 million euros this year due to crisis-era belt-tightening.

Malta's Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and his Spanish counterpart Mariano Rajoy have added their voices to Letta's demand for the European Union to share the burden.

Italy says migrant numbers increased fourfold this year to 30,000, while Spain says twice as many Africans – 3,000 – have tried to slip through its barbed-wire territory of Melilla in north Morocco this year.

Analysts say it is high time for the EU to define a common policy that will address how to respond jointly to refugees from conflict and migrants in search of a better life.

"Far too many people are dying every year at the EU's external borders," said Yves Pascouau of the European Policy Centre think-tank.